Mission: Bleed Blue Jumpstarts Student Participation

October 2, 2013

By Jacqueline Stoughton

Central Connecticut State University is enacting a new initiative in an attempt to bring more awareness and participation to on-campus events that are sponsored by various organizations that exist at CCSU. They’re calling this new initiative Mission: Bleed Blue.

“Mission: Bleed Blue is a new initiative we’re starting on campus where we’re sponsoring certain events throughout the semester,” said Brian Choplick, president of CCSU’s Student Government Association. “If students go and swipe in at those events, they’ll earn a certain amount of points per event. Once they hit a certain amount of points they’ll be eligible for certain prizes.”

All students have to do to be in the running to win a variety of prizes is to swipe their Blue-Chip card at each event they attend. The points earned will then be distributed through the collegiate links system. Students are already registered within that system if they are actively involved with any club on campus.

“The point system is a little bit different than normal point systems. It’s not like cash, where you give us points in exchange for something in return,” said Choplick. “The first 200 people to hit ten points will win the first prize, which is a Mission: Bleed Blue t-shirt. As people hit certain tiers in the point system, they’re eligible for the prizes.”

“The prizes get larger and cooler as you go up. They’re apparel type items, but not the usual you would get,” said Michelle Zohlman, president of the Central Activities Network. “We wanted to be different and make it stuff you couldn’t typically get at the bookstore. It’s stuff you essentially don’t want to pay for.”

Although CCSU is enacting this new initiative to try and bring in more participation at campus events, lack of attendance and participation at such events was never a troubling concern, and certainly not the sole reason this initiative was created, according to the founders of the initiative.

“There’s never an amount of people that is too much. But, we should always be looking to improve the amount of people that attend events,” said Choplick. “One of the things we’re attempting to address through this initiative is the completely false stigma that there’s nothing going on at Central.”

“The point of Mission: Bleed Blue is to reward students for being a part of the students activities programming on campus and to really show them that there are these things to do on campus and to tell them to keep supporting it because there’re these great programs that aren’t getting the support they should be,” said Zohlman.

Mission: Bleed Blue is defined as being it’s own entity. It has no association with CAN, SGA or any other major organization on campus. This is a new system that has been in the works since last November, and has just recently been announced this past August.

“I think that the Mission: Bleed Blue is a really good initiative to get students involved around campus and develop themselves as better leaders,” said CCSU student, Danielle McCormick. “I have always gone to events and been involved on campus. But, I definitely think that we need to get more people to come out and participate in more events. This program is essentially the first step to making great leaders at CCSU.”

Mission: Bleed Blue has already begun, it’s first two events being the CAN Carnival and Family Day. Its next event where students will be able to swipe in and earn points is at this weeks pep rally.

“From a CAN perspective, we’ve had the best attendance in events. We’ve actually broken our record for events attendance,” said Zohlman. “We’re interested to see how it’ll affect indoor events.”